The Pod-bearers 



As an ornamental tree, the chief drawback of the locust is its 

 unsightliness when bare of leaves. The fact should he added that 

 the leaves come late and fall early. The tree sends up suckers 

 freely from the roots, which unfits it for planting on lawns. There 

 are sixteen varieties of this tree known in cultivation. With all 

 its faults they love it still; the American people plant locusts for 

 the borers to distort. 



The prickles that arm these trees are not thorns at all. They 

 are but skin deep, like prickles of rose and gooseberry bushes. 

 But they persist and become quite formidable. They are merely 

 stipules of the leaves. Each pair of leaflets has a pair of tiny 

 spines guarding the base. But they are transient, falling with the 

 leaf. Thornless trees often occur in groves of locusts. 



The Clammy Locust (Robtnia viscosa, Vent.) is a little, 

 rough-barked tree that grows wild in the mountains of North 

 Carolina. It is a favourite garden ornament, for it has delicate 

 feathery foliage and the shaded pinks of its close flower cluster 

 make a combination of form and colour no artist can resist. 

 The calyxes are dark red, and all the new growth shines with the 

 sticky substance that exudes from the covering of glandular 

 hairs, and gives the tree its name. The spines are inconspicuous. 



The New Mexican Locust (Robinia Neo-Mexkana, Gray) 

 rarely rises higher than a shrub in the Southwestern semi-desert 

 regions. Its tender shoots are covered with glandular but not 

 viscid hairs. The flowers are rosy and handsome. The twigs 

 are armed with short, stout, recurved spines. 



The Bristly Locust (Robtnia hispida, Linn.), a garden 

 shrub with large crimson flowers and bristly hairs covering its 

 shoots, is probably the most common locust in cultivation. 



5. Genus CLADRASTIS, Raf. 



' The genus Cladrastis is "Queen of Beauty" among the 

 pod-bearers. It is represented by one species in the eastern 

 United States and another in Manchuria. The name, from two 

 Greek words, refers to the brittleness of the branches. 



The Yellow-wood, or Virgilia {Cladrastis lutea, K. Koch.), 

 is native to the limestone hillslopes of Tennessee, Kentucky and 

 North Carolina, but even here it is very rare. It is cultivated, 



